The government has failed to routinely measure the benefits of its main portals - the Government Gateway, Directgov and Business.gov - which together have cost £90.3m over the past three years, says the National Audit Office (NAO).
In its report titled Digital Britain One: Shared infrastructure and services for government online …

yessssss

Directgov was a power grab. A load of suits in Whitehall get to spend money on advertising while swallowing up cheaper, more useable websites. I work for a big government body as well and using Directgov is way more expensive than running our own website. All our decisions need to go through London suits.

"found evidence of a persistent skills gap in government"

There is a point......

The value of the centralising approach is not that it saves money on the website. But it becomes much easier to spot what things government doesn't need to be doing at all, or could be done by a couple of blokes in a shed.

The DVLA: considered as a department, it's you-know a department or sumfink. Obviously delivers an important service, have to register cars etc, etc. But as a government sub-website?

Now it becomes obvious that its functions are:

1) Receives V5's and car-tax payment. Sends out info on car owners to police and other entitled parties [Hang on a sec, why sends out? Why not just a queryable DB?].

Anyone who has experience with #2 knows just how bad their record of performance is. Like Berlusconi, they had to change the law to protect themselves (Disability Discrimination Act). Against their own internal targets, they currently have a 10% achievement rate. (yes, you read that right.......)

So, we have a "department" that employees 7000 people, costs £500M a year, that....runs a database and billing department. A big database - but it doesn't cost £500M a year.....should be similar to a large bank. And guess what - that database looks remarkably like TV licensing - where do you live? do you own a car (yes/no)? Do you own a telly (yes/no)? Please pay this bill wot we sent you, once a year......

And THAT's why .gov.uk is a good thing. Because once it becomes obvious that's all they do, the DVLA are HISTORY - not a moment too soon.

Sounds like the business case for direct.gov

What fantasy Britain do you live in...

... where whole bureaucracies can be trimmed back or abolished, just because they're as useless as tits on a crocodile?

No, the *best* case is that there's a huge fuss about how hopelessly outdated the DVLA's database is, and a huge national campaign is launched to make everyone update their details and check them at least twice a year. Then those 7000 people can be gainfully employed with spamming everyone in the country to remind them.

A more likely scenario would be that the DVLA is made responsible for 'policing' car ownership, and you won't be able to buy or sell a car without logging onto their database, identifying both parties to the transaction, creating an ID for the guy you're selling to and checking that his Brazilian driving license does indeed allow him to drive it away, certifying on pain of perjury that you haven't "modified" the car at all, applying for a rebate on your prepaid road tax, entering the odometer reading and viewing a history of every MOT, every tax disc and every reported accident the car has ever been near.

It's queer thing

When the penny [post was invented, govt. departments had to deal with letters from people. When the telephone came along they started answering the phone. I don't recall anyone agonising over the costs then.

Now the internet has come along, and they'e responded. So why the costs analysis? It's something they need to have, like a roof.

Actually, the penny post went way over-budget

That wasn't the question

The point here is that Directgov and its companions have not shown their value, not that gov. websites in general aren't useful. Directgov is a waste of space. I always google the actual thing I need and get taken straight to it. Directgov is a miserable attempt at a portal where none is needed.

£83 milion for zero savings

Smug smile from me. Under Varney, Directgov was supposed to save £400 million on websites alone (plus another £400 million in avoided letters and phone calls, but let's not be mean). seems like we have a right to know where that cash went. £2 million went on one advert. The website they offer is rotten. If you want to improve public sector computing and save money, write a big cheque to every public sector organisation to build their own websites.